Entries for 'rhalpern'

How often have you heard  the idiom "the devil is in the details"  especially in terms of financial reporting such as SEC filings ?  Something may look good on paper or at first glance but requires further study to discern it's real meaning  or value.  Financial sleuthing comes in different forms this month in Research Helpline (read on) ....

The October Research Helplline addresses information and intelligence-gathering with analysis and its importance in product development, and guidance for corporations.  Some practical sites to use for your own investigations of companies and their competitive positions is included. 

* 75% of professionals regularly eat lunch at their desk, according to the American Dietetic Association (but do they get indigestion?  This much we don't know.)

* Guiyang, the capital of Guizhous Province, is strategically located at the crossroads of China's major markets including the Pearl River Delta.  Real estate costs are 30-40% less than in Beijing.

September's Research Helpline covers private company research, new product development and an article from MD&DI (Medical Devices & Diagnostics Industry) on Research Essentials, and more!

Managing information is not given the same prominence in organizations, as say, managing finances or managing staff.  Data and information are considered the cornerstones of knowledge, yet analysis of information is fleeting; this is the case even if knowledge has been replaced hard assets as the basis of competitiveness. 

Research Helpline is the monthly e-mail bulletin with helpful information on topics of interest.  This month, International business information you can use plus Newsworthy medical information you may have missed are the topics.  

Blog research is primary research, useful for business, industry and competitive intelligence-gathering, though often overlooked.  Blog research is primary research, since you're reading the original author's writings, thoughts, analysis, commentary.  Blogs vary in quality, content, accuracy and frequency.  Much like other portions of the Internet, the best advise when doing research through blogs, is to check the source to make sure it is authoritative, relevant and verified.  Blog research should be used as one source and not the only source. 

Fee or free ?  Why would anyone purchase content when so much is available for free, just a click away?  There's never been a time where there's so much information available, or provided by anonymous and/or helpful strangers in social networking sites, through search engines, government sites, Wikipedia, etc. ...

We may not know our customers or competitors as well as we should, but we seem to want to know all about Google, don't we?  Google, the world's largest search engine has around eight billion web pages indexed.  But Google can only index the visible web, or searchable web.  The invisible or deep web is estimated to be 500 times bigger than the searchable web.

Finding people.... the importance of building a strong online identity by those who want to be found is reflected in the number of people search engines such as Peek You - www.peekyou.com and wink - www.wink.com.  Also you'll find profile aggregators such as claimID - www.claimid.com.  Lijit at www.ligit.com and Ziki at www.ziki.com.

Reliable online resources from the Middle East are few and far between.  A new service from Infosphere, a Swedish information firm (www.infosphere.se) provides reports and databases that help fill this void.  (see inside, for more including new healthcare choices, and political initiatives ...)

Accident research for cirminal justice and forensic scientist investigations, the business of weddings and how Americans spend their time covers this month's research topics and tips. 

The Center for National Truck and Bus Statistics (www.umtri.umich.edu) was established in 1988 to formalize the national program to collect and analyze truck accident data, which actually began with 1980 data .....

China's Medical Device Market .... U.S. exports to China in medical equipment and supplies have had a 34.6% growth rate from 2002 to 2003, compared with a 9.39% growth rate in the export of these goods to the rest of the world.  The rate is also faster than the growth rate of total U.S. exports to ......

Digital image collections and the means to find them is the subject this month.. A snapshot of a few of the many unique digital resources available online today are described below, a long with a different kind of  archival image retrieval system used by law enforcement officials ....

Research is a process undertaken to arrive at an answer.  It could be simple like finding the annual sales of a public company or complicated like developing the diverse events profile and adverse drug reactions from clinical trials and post-marketing surveillance reports.  The approaches used to determine the outcome varies from case to case.  (cont'd, inside)

If you find information storage and retrieval to be a challenge, you're not alone.  The problem of "can't find it when you need it"  is well-documented by IDC, Reuters, LexisNexis, Working Council of CIOs, and others.  Information management - the organization, reorganization and effective retrieval of information - is a universal problem and getting worse.   But there is help!

(see inside)

The top four countries in medical devices are United States, Japan, Germany and France.  But learning about the Japanese market is no small undertaking. 

Access to Japanese publicly and privately traded companies is often listed only in Japanese ...

(see inside for more information Japanese and Chinese company research, research on practical applications for what matters most in the VC funding decision, and more ...

March 6, 2008 (Franklin, MA). When a leading Massachusetts-based contract manufacturer, Optimum Technologies, Inc. needed a preliminary assessment of a market entry point for a new light-emitting optical cancer detection technology, CEO & Founder, Randy Chinnock, turned to Richard Halpern at Halpern Info Services to assemble a team of expert information research professionals to do the project. (cont'd)

Shhh!  Somebody may be listening!  Well, now there's a Search engine for Message Boards from SeattlePI.com ( an online-only Seattle magazine) and it's known as Dipity - www.dipiti.com/.

Dipiti indexes over 2300 communities and almost 29 million conversations organized into health, (cont'd) ....

BioMedExperts (http://www.biomedexperts.com) is the "first online social network of its kind to improve collaboration among researchers and therefore advance medical science.  The service recently launched with more than 1.4 million pre-generated profiles of its expected users from 120 countries 

More useful tips and advice on how to find business and medical information, and why it matters --

What is the market size for lesser known global sports like bird watching, target shooting and wakeboarding? (Wakeboarding is a surface water sport where a rider is towed by a motorboat across its wake while strapped onto a short board with foot bindings. Aerial maneuvers are encouraged off the crest.) 

This month in Research Helpline the focus is on public opinion, polling services and attitude research.  It's essential to know the perceptions, values and beliefs of consumers, if you plan to reach them in your communications.

Public relations firms create "buzz" around a product to get media attention, to get customers talking and thinking.....

With the strength and expansion of the Brazilian economy on track to hit the 4.5% target for the year, Halpern Info Services joins with RB International Trade Services (RBITS) which specializes in the Brazilian market.  RBITS, based in Los Angeles, is an alliance of service providers focused on small business importers and exporters in today's flat world.  RBITS CEO & Founder, Rosaliene Bacchus, is an international trade specialist with over 14 years of experience.

RBITS' services include import and export shipment coordination with brokers, freight forwarders, suppliers/buyers and transport.  Halpern Info Services, a member of the World Trade Center Association (WTCA), provides custom business, industry and competitive research on a fixed fee project basis with special attention to marketing, sales and distribution requirements for US market Entry for Brazilian firms.  Secondary and primary research is used by companies involved with market expansion and new product introductions involving global trade.

Information that is not public record is not necessarily private.

Two subjects are covered this month -- Public records research for business and individual research, and two alternative search engines -- one that uses natural language queries and the other that is very visual and creative. 

Information might become public through several legitimate means.  Two such means are disclosure in a public record as in a bankrupty and divorce. The EDGAR database (Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval system), from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) contains public company filings.

Further proof of the explosion of content -- According to PQ Media (Stamford, CT), there are now at least 21 platforms for accessing content (Video on Demand, instant messaging, e-mail, game console, blogs, PDA, MP3, etc.).  Ten years ago there were only eight (newspapers, TV, radio, etc.). Multi-tasking amongst the different media platforms seems to be the norm for some age groups ...

When Ray Tomlinson, principal scientist at BBN (Cambridge, MA) sent the first email message in 1971, little did he know that the Internet would become a shoppping mecca for millions of browsers and buyers worldwide.